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Pinning Scottish Independence on a Fervor for 1314

The Robert the Bruce memorial at the site of the Battle of Bannockburn.Credit
Andrew Testa for The New York Times

STIRLING, Scotland — On a fine day, the granite memorial atop a grassy rise outside this ancient Scottish city offers a grand panorama — west to the craggy fastness of Stirling Castle, north to the hills that stand gateway to the highlands, east toward Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh, and south across rolling lowlands that stretch onward to England.

It was here, in June 1314, that a vastly outnumbered army led by Robert the Bruce, the Scottish king, annihilated the English army of King Edward II, assuring Scotland’s independence. It was a sovereignty that lasted, through a bloody history, until the two countries were joined in a single kingdom, Great Britain, nearly 400 years later.

Ever since then, the Battle of Bannockburn, named for a medieval settlement swallowed up by modern Stirling’s sprawl, has been an emblem of something evident in the popular ferment when Scotland and England meet in their annual rugby matches — or in any other contest that tests the strengths and talents of the two peoples: that Scotland will never forget, and only reluctantly forgive, what was won at Bannockburn, then surrendered in the Acts of Union of 1707.

Small wonder, then, that Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister, has anchored his hopes of winning the backing of a majority of Scotland’s five million people for an end to the union with England — for independence — on a surge in the nationalist feelings stirred by memories of Bannockburn. Setting out his plans this year for a referendum, he laid down a schedule that would see the referendum held in the autumn of 2014, when the 700th anniversary of the battle will be commemorated with festivities that will be centered here, but replicated in every corner of Scotland.

The referendum date is only one of the issues that have pitted Mr. Salmond, Scotland’s most popular politician for a generation, against the British prime minister, David Cameron. Mr. Cameron has accepted a referendum, which can lawfully be held only with the consent of the government in London. Indeed, he has welcomed it, in the belief, he has said, that the independence bid will founder on the reluctance that Scots have traditionally shown for an outright rupture of the constitutional bond.

Only rarely in modern times has support for Scotland breaking away risen above 30 percent in Scottish opinion polls, though some polls have shown the figure moving into the mid-to-high 30s since Mr. Salmond and his Scottish National Party outperformed pre-election opinion polls by a wide margin in winning an outright majority in the Scottish Parliament last year.

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Alex Salmond, left, and David Cameron at a meeting in February that produced a deadlock.Credit
Pool photo by David Cheskin

That was a milestone few would have believed possible in the decades when the nationalist party languished on the fringes of Scottish politics, before the charismatic Mr. Salmond, a former oil economist, took over and eclipsed a succession of lackluster opponents in the “pro union” parties — Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives — that had hitherto dominated in Scottish politics.

The 2011 victory emboldened Mr. Salmond to make his move for independence within his current five-year mandate, but only toward the end of his term, in 2014, when he hopes for a “Bannockburn” bounce — and, perhaps, for a recovery from the prolonged recession in Scotland, deeper than England’s — that could win over voters who might otherwise be reluctant to hazard further economic hardship.

Mr. Cameron, whose own forebears on his father’s side are Scottish, has a tricky course to steer in meeting Mr. Salmond’s challenge, acknowledging that there is a strong wellspring of nationalism in Scotland, and that the effort to head off independence has to stress the advantages of Scotland’s remaining part of the United Kingdom, not the risks to Scotland of a breakaway, while embracing the power of nationalist sentiment.

“We walk taller, stand prouder, shout louder together,” he said in a recent speech to Scottish Conservatives. “That’s why not only can you love Scotland and love the United Kingdom, not only can you drape yourself in the Saltire and the Union Jack, but you can be prouder of your Scottish heritage than your British heritage — as many in Scotland are — and still believe that Scotland is better off in Britain.”

But on the mechanics of the referendum, Mr. Cameron has met Mr. Salmond head-on, telling aides that “losing Scotland” in the referendum would most likely doom his Conservative Party in the British election expected in 2015. He has rejected Mr. Salmond’s demand that 16- and 17-year-olds — a group regarded as likely to vote overwhelmingly for independence — be included in the referendum vote, a break with British laws that set the minimum voting age at 18.

He has also quarreled with Mr. Salmond’s formula for the question to be put to Scottish voters, an issue on which Britain’s election commission will have the final say. Mr. Cameron has said the referendum should be a straight “in or out” vote, on whether Scottish voters want to remain part of the United Kingdom. Mr. Salmond has said he favors a question more likely to maximize the pro-independence vote: “Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?”

Mr. Salmond has also said, in the face of strong objections from Mr. Cameron, that he favors a second question on the ballot, asking voters whether they would favor an autonomous Scotland with much broader powers than it currently has, but still part of the United Kingdom — a compromise that polls suggest would probably win a majority.

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Scotland lost its independence from England in 1707.Credit
The New York Times

The two leaders also differ on the timing of the referendum. Mr. Cameron favors an early vote; Mr. Salmond, apparently eager for time to build support for a breakaway, has held to his demand for a vote in 2014, with the possibility of independence by 2016.

An Edinburgh meeting between the two leaders earlier this year ended in bitter deadlock, each man belittling the other. Both have quoted from Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet. Mr. Salmond chose citations that reflect Burns’s 18th-century lament for Scotland’s lost independence. Mr. Cameron cited a popular passage in which the poet described a mouse — in Mr. Cameron’s implication, Mr. Salmond — as a “wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie.”

Mr. Salmond, by turn, offered Mr. Cameron free elocution lessons so that he could cite Burns’s lines with an inflection that made them comprehensible to Scottish ears.

The British leader has followed that with a mocking reference to Mr. Salmond’s attempts to delay the referendum. “I thought we were meant to be watching ‘Braveheart,’ ” he told the Scottish Conservatives. “It turns out it’s ‘Chicken Run.’ ”

But a day visiting Stirling suggested that Mr. Salmond might have the wind at his back. At the Bannockburn memorial, among a half-dozen people encountered exercising dogs, enjoying the fresh air and eating their lunchtime sandwiches, support for independence was strong. Alex McClelland, 23, a teacher’s aide at a local secondary school who described himself as a descendant of Robert the Bruce, cast the issue as a matter of pride.

“Alex Salmond is smug and arrogant, everybody can see that,” he said. “But he has a vision, a big vision, and none of his political opponents have any vision at all. All they come up with are arguments that belittle Scotland. It’s time we stood up on our own.”

In the heart of old Stirling, at Alex Waldron’s bagpipe shop, Mr. Waldron, 41, leaned toward backing the independence bid.

“Is two and a half years enough time for Salmond to swing it, raising that 30 percent in the polls to 51 percent?” he asked. “I don’t know. I listen to people who come into the shop, and their confidence goes through peaks and troughs, from ‘We can’t do it, we’re not good enough,’ to ‘We are good enough! We can do it!’ I think Salmond will push the polls up by another 10 percent, but in the end, he’ll fall just that little bit short.”

A version of this article appears in print on April 5, 2012, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Pinning Scottish Independence on a Fervor for 1314. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe